How Lack of Sleep Affects Your Sex Life

In astudy, researchers concluded that every extra hour of sleep the women received made them 14 percent more likely to engage in partnered sexual activity. In other words more sleep led to more sex.

A result like that made us wonder what other effects sleep—or lack thereof—is having on our sex lives. Here’s what we found:

Lack of sleep lowers testosterone levels, kills your libido.

Testosterone plays a key role in a person’s sex drive (especially men), which is why not getting enough sleep can have profoundly negative effects on the libido, considering it lowers testosterone. A study found that after one week of sleep deprivation (less than 5 hours of sleep a night), young men had 15 percent less testosterone than normal—which is by no means insignificant.

Lack of sleep can negatively affect vaginal lubrication.

In a study, researchers found that women who, on average, got more sleep reported better genital arousal and vaginal lubrication versus women with lower average sleep duration. As many ladies know, vaginal lubrication is a key component to pleasurable, pain-free sex.

Chronic sleep loss can cause erectile dysfunction in men.

Several studies have found links between erectile dysfunction and sleep loss. According to a research, this link when they asked 401 men who supposedly had sleep apnea—a sleep disorder which causes short pauses in breathing and fragmented sleep—to come in for testing. Of those who were diagnosed with the disorder, 70 percent also had erectile dysfunction, leading researchers to believe they were connected. After patients were treated for sleep apnea they were less likely to have erectile dysfunction and their sex lives improve as well.

Sleep loss causes men to misjudge women’s sexual interest.

A lack of sleep can have a profound effect on the brain, especially in regards to the frontal lobe which influences risk-taking, decision-making, and moral reasoning. A study published in SLEEP found that following just one night of sleep deprivation men greatly overestimated the sexual intent of women—i.e. they were more likely to think women wanted sex with them, when that was sooo not the case.

Sleep problems cause women to have more sexual distress.

It’s true, not getting enough sleep can lead to stress in the bedroom. A study found that women with sleep apnea were more likely to have sexual distress (i.e. sexually-related personal distress) and more likely to report sexual dysfunction than the general female population. FYI: There are millions of women more who may have sleep apnea and don’t know it, thinking they just “can’t sleep.”

Sleep and depression are linked, another blow to the sex drive.

One of the key symptoms of depression is insomnia, or an inability to fall asleep. However, it can be difficult to determine if depression causes insomnia or if insomnia may cause depression. After analyzing20,822 young adults they found that those who were short sleepers were more likely to report psychological distress from the lack of sleep and, for some, it turned into full-blown depression.

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